From his first appearance, everyone knew that Two-Face was crazy.
The coin flipping, referring to himself as “we” and “us,” splitting his
wardrobe and even his hideouts down the center to match his disfigured face,
it went beyond unhealthy obsession into a full-blown, psychotic disconnect
from reality.

But as Two-Face himself was always happy to explain, there are two kinds
of crazy in the world. There’s the stupid, pointless, self-destructive
crazy, and then there’s smart crazy. He was the latter.

He did not go shooting his own henchmen just to prove he was a bad guy.
He didn’t go shooting his own henchmen just because it was Thursday.
He didn’t even flip his coin to decide whether to shoot a henchman for such
an idiotic reason. His rationale was sanity itself: henchmen were a
limited good. There were a finite number of men in the world that you
could hire to carry a bomb for you. There were a finite number of men
who would run up to Batman with their fists clenched rather than run
screaming into the nearest alley, police precinct, or church. Of
those, only about two-thirds would accept a suitable designation, such as
Duo or Ditto, and wear a costume properly divided down the center. In
short, while there were plenty of potential henchmen out there, there
weren’t so many that you could go around shooting them willy-nilly. It
was for practical reasons as much as theme that Two-Face preferred using the
same henchmen a second time.

The world at large was not privy to his reasoning (although Batman had
speculated a few times in his logs), but they knew the result: Two-Face
reused henchmen. Since a copycat would be perfectly aware of the
practice, Batman wanted to roust as many former Two-Face henchmen as he
could find. Not only were they likely to be approached by either a
copycat or the original, they were in a position to know the difference.

It was certainly the most promising route of investigation, but it would
have to wait. Nick the doorman was the top priority.

Nick was a longshot as far as having useful information, but he was a
civilian and a working man. Civilians deserved better than nightmare
shadows coming to life outside their windows in the dead of night and
midnight interrogations from masked vigilantes, particularly when they had
to be at work in six hours. So Batman called on Nick first, when it
was more dusk than dark outside and while the man was still awake and
watching television. The silent appearance at the window still
startled Nick momentarily, but a fully silhouetted and recognizable
Batman wasn’t soul-wrenchingly terrifying the way a mass of black with only
two slits of vengeful hate glaring through the darkness is terrifying.
At least, that’s what Batman told himself. It was just possible that
innocents like Nick didn’t fear him simply because they were
innocents. A clear conscience and all that.

As expected, Nick didn’t have much to say about Harvey’s movements beyond
what he’d already told Selina. He did mention that Mr. Dent was quite
the ladies’ man (not news), and that he seemed to be something of a serial
monogamist. First, there was this hot redhead (Claudia Muffington,
surely), then a thin, petite brunette he called Dina (Diana North, Bruce had
seen them at D’Annunzio’s a couple times), and the current one was blonde.
Lotta Botox. Usually wore red. (Could be almost anyone, but the
red argued for Angela Vraag…)

Vraag was the Dutch word for “question,” and Riddler had kidnapped her
once. An ongoing criminal connection was unlikely, however, since
Nigma later dated her cousin Penny. That presumably meant he was done
with the Vraag angle for criminal targets, but Batman left a mental asterisk
over Harvey’s lady friends anyway. If Harvey was dating Angela Vraag,
and if other avenues of investigation came up empty, it was worth following
up with Nigma.

“What is like the popular table in high school… or 16th-century
Versailles… covered with leopard print throw pillows… with a little patch of
radiant purple in the center… sipping her favorite martini?”

Raven sighed as if she’d heard more than enough of these whimsical
requests to be seated near Catwoman in the most exclusive corner of the VIP
room. It was never like this at the Iceberg. Oswald’s office was
just Oswald’s office. It had nothing to do with Raven as the hostess.
And even if she had been stuck acting as his doorkeeper, she imagined the
rogues wanting to see him wouldn’t have been in such a party mood.

She didn’t show Riddler to a table, she just made a disinterested nod in
the general direction. He would just get up as soon as she’d seated
him and wander over to Catwoman, assuming he hadn’t offended Clayface.
If he had, Clayface would morph into the MGM lion, roar twice, and if the
unwelcome rogue had really offended him, chase him up to the rafters (since
the VIP room, unlike the Iceberg dining room, had no chandelier).

In most nightclubs, a good hostess did everything she could to avoid that
kind of a scene, but at Vault, like the Iceberg before it, such uprisings
were part of the charm. So she just waved the big names through…
Riddler, Scarecrow, Mad Hatter, Mr. Freeze… and let them fend for
themselves.

Harvey’s building had a night doorman as well. He was on duty until
dawn, and there was no reason to question him before midnight. But
Batman decided to talk to him next, while the details of Harvey’s domestic
situation were fresh in his mind. The man’s name was Ian Fisher, and
Batman had investigated him thoroughly several years earlier. It was
shortly after he began visiting Selina’s apartment after his late patrol.
Doormen are paid to notice the comings and goings at street level. It
was unlikely he would see a black cape against a black sky all those stories
above, even if he happened to look up at just the right moment.
Nevertheless, as Batman began swooping down to that same balcony night after
night, he thought it prudent to investigate that nagging “what if.”

He learned that Ian Fisher was a native Gothamite, the oldest of four
boys. He attended St. Swithun’s Pre-School, Elementary, and High
School. Joined the Navy, honorable discharge. Married a girl
from the neighborhood. 2 kids. Worked as a bouncer at a club
inside a downtown hotel. After six months, he became a doorman at the
hotel, and three years later took the same job at a residential building in
Harrow. Stayed there six years before taking the job at Selina’s
building. Volunteered at the Adult Literacy League and Habitat for
Humanity. A family man, ties to the community, an ideal employee in every
respect… which made it very strange that he wasn’t at his post.

Batman made four passes around the block, muscle memory adjusting the
angle of the batline each time he made the final swing north towards
Selina’s balcony. On the fourth swing, he twisted abruptly as he saw
Ian Fisher back at his post, the legs of his uniform and shoes just visible
under the awning, right where they had always been when Batman made this
approach in the past. He shot a new line to the nearest gargoyle,
swung low to a streetlight, and then dropped to the sidewalk four feet from
the awning.

Fisher was slow to react, and Batman proceeded carefully, although he was
beginning to suspect why he had left his post for so long.

“Mr. Fisher?” he said, louder and more aggressively than he would
normally address a civilian who had done nothing wrong.

This time there was a response: only one word and murmured too softly to
be heard. But by now, Batman was quite sure what had happened: the
day’s events, the proximity of the park, the Sherborn woman’s dogs and
Selina’s investigation… Batman was quite sure what had happened, and he was
quite certain what the unintelligible word was. The day’s events,
the proximity of the park, man’s eyes were glassy and unfocused…

“Fisher!” he barked, shaking the doorman’s shoulders.

“Greeeeen,” came the blissfully anguished reply.

Catwoman’s Queen of the Underworld differed from Oswald’s Emperor Penguin
in many respects, the most obvious being her availability. She did not
own or manage “her” nightclub. She wasn’t on the premises any time the
doors were open. She made an appearance most nights, but only after
her prowl and only if she felt like it. Top tier rogues, even those
who had never set foot in Vault, approved of her methods. It signified
a practicing villainess who was still out there, actively challenging the
Bat each night in person. Penguin was among the best in his day,
certainly, but when did he ever have to vanish from the Iceberg for nearly a
week because Batman was out for his blood and Superman was tearing up the
skies looking for him after a double-rout in Metropolis?

So Riddler wasn’t particularly surprised to see the booth was empty when
he reached the back corner of the VIP room; he was disappointed, naturally,
but not surprised. He scanned the room for someone else to show off
his wonderful new riddle-delivery system. Magpie would be
appreciative, but she wouldn’t get it. Roxy would be enthusiastic on
general principle, but he didn’t think she would get it either. She
probably thought riddles were a way to secure Batman’s presence at a crime
in order to lead him on a high-speed pursuit through a fireworks factory.
Double Dare were too full of themselves to appreciate anyone else’s methods.

He sighed. It looked like the only rogues present capable of really
appreciating the cleverness of his new toy were Clayface, Scarecrow, and Mad
Hatter. Was it really worth impressing them?

Ivy.

Psychobat hated all criminals. It was the fire that drove him
through pain and exhaustion, in the face of impossible odds and daunting
setbacks. But even that most basic core hatred had an ebb and flow.
There were degrees and levels. There were spikes and valleys.

Poison Ivy was a spike.

The way that woman could wreak havoc on a well-planned course of action.
In the past, he’d lost entire weeks of crimefighting in the grip of her
pheromones, weeks that should have been spent protecting his city, lost in
her madness of green. Somehow, this was more infuriating.
At least then, she was DELIBERATELY TRYING. When she greened Bruce
Wayne, when she greened Batman, it was a purposeful, premeditated and
calculated act, with malice aforethought and criminal intent. But
this! This was… She was costing him hours—scarce, valuable hours that
he did not have to spare from the Two-Face investigation—as a mere waste
product of her lonely, psychotic, dysfunctional...

“Greeeeen,” the figure in the passenger seat moaned as the Batmobile
turned onto Gotham General’s emergency ramp. He barked instructions to
the trauma team. He nearly punched a nurse’s aide coming at him with a
clipboard. Emergency room personnel were supposed to know that when
the Batmobile shows up, the only question is “SmileX, gunshot, fear toxin,
or pheromones?” The rest was not Batman’s concern.

He glared at the sniveling non-entity, glared with the ferocious loathing
usually reserved for gunmen in back alleys. He spun on his heels,
producing a dramatic sweep of the cape worthy of a Dracula exit, got into
the car and drove off.

Only then did the guilt hit. His frustration was with Ivy and with
the Two-Face situation. He had no business taking it out on a girl on
a loading dock, even if she was a more-than-usually-stupid bureaucrat.
The Wayne Foundation would have to make up for it, as usual. Arrange
an event of some kind to recognize hospital employees, special mention for
the night shifts in the emergency rooms, etc. He’d get Cynthia
on it in the morning. In the meantime…

He checked the dashboard clock…

Damnit. Nearly midnight and he hadn’t even made it back to
the Liberty One building yet.

The satellite cave underneath the Wayne Tower was physically smaller than
the manor cave, but Batman had made no compromises in the lab and research
facilities.

On his return to the Liberty One building, he’d made imprints of the
scarring on that giant coin in the lobby. He fed these into the
Batcomputer to try and determine what kind of instrument could have made
them.

He initiated several other standard routines on the Batcomputer,
including a search of the previous night’s police reports, since there had
been multiple shots fired in the course of that Two-Face encounter. He
would like to think that the noise would have been heard and reported… but
it looked like the only reports of gunfire in the vicinity was the domestic
disturbance at the townhouse. Bruce forced down a second attack of
guilt. He’d been bored before the Two-Face encounter. He’d been
craving action. And now…

On the long work table, Batman prepared slides with remnants of the “goo”
harvested from the Liberty One stairwell, and samples of the same substance
dried on his grapnel and on his cape. Analyzing these, he found
it was a high-viscosity lubricant composed of fatty acids, graphite, and
mica, enriched with Teflon and molybdenum disulfide… used in countless
facilities in the greater Gotham area, no help there.

The sample from the grapnel had particles of the container it had
pierced, releasing the oil slick and springing the trap. It was made
of an ordinary polymer, mustard yellow. That detail gave him the
manufacturer. According to the Batcomputer, of all the industrial
lubricants with these chemical ingredients, only ThomChemCo used mustard
yellow in its packaging… The Thomas Chemical Company was founded in 1949,
factory in West Virginia, distribution hub in Bludhaven… number one
industrial lubricant on the market, used in at least 8,000 facilities in
Gotham… no help at all.

He turned his attention to the bomb. All manufactured C4, and
several of the standard components for making it, contain chemical markers
such as 2,3-dimethyl-2,3-dinitrobutane to indicate their source, makeup, and
manufacturer. It should have been a simple matter to track down where
they came from, who manufactured them and who purchased them… but it wasn’t.
The C4, the timer, and the blasting caps all traced to an Argentine arms
dealer who dealt exclusively in the sales of tanks, rocket launchers and
Scud missiles. Not likely… A little looking into a forged extradition
request regarding a hijacking that never took place uncovered a second
provenance for the explosives and the blasting caps: an IRA supplier
operating in San Francisco… who turned state’s evidence in 1982.

Two false trails.

Worse. Two false trails laid by a person (or persons) with detailed
knowledge of forensic investigation. The kind of knowledge an
experienced district attorney had at his fingertips.

Batman shook that troubling notion from his mind and checked the time.

There was more than enough of the night left to round up those old
Two-Face henchmen. He instructed the Batcomputer to relay its findings
to the Batmobile and set out for the most popular criminal hangouts…

As usual, Catwoman felt a dozen sets of eyes tracking her movements as
she entered Vault. Some were subtle: KGBeast and Firefly. (What
could they want? Torching Petrossian and fencing the stolen caviar?)
Some were not: Eddie stepped away from a video poker machine, leaving the
nearest henchman to play out the hand he’d already paid for while he made a
beeline for the stairs to the VIP room. At the same time, a ball of
cat-size black fur that appeared to be “napping” on the bar suddenly
sprouted cat ears, stretched out into a long sinewy form, and then leapt to
the stairs as a magnificent panther.

The three settled in at her booth, drinks and snacks were ordered, and
Eddie took out a thin wooden box, the size of a small picture frame, to
demonstrate his new contraption.

“I got the idea from ancient Rome. They had most of their documents
written out on these wax tablets set into wood cases just like this.
Check it out, ‘Lina, what is the stuff of bees and trees, but holds the keys
(to my next criminal escapade), or just a tease.”

“Cute,” Selina smiled, while Clayface morphed into a Roman senator and
posed dramatically with a document/riddle-box identical to Nigma’s.

“Cute? Cute?! Why, it’s more than cute, it’s brilliant!
Did you know the Roman calendar had special days set aside where no legal
business could be conducted? They were called the dies
nefasti, which is an anagram for, among other things: FINEST IDEAS!”

“I see why you’re excited,” Selina laughed.

“There are also several anagrams with ‘safes’ ‘finis’ ‘fiend’…
I tell you, there’s no end of the fun I can have with this.”

“I’m glad. You haven’t had much fun lately. Of course, a safe
is also a vault, Edward. You get any ‘finest ideas’ about
attacking here, Batman will be the least of your worries.”

She said it teasingly, but Senator Clayface growled anyway.

“East Side Fin,” Eddie offered as an olive branch.

“Damn straight,” Clayface said, returning to his natural glorpy form.

“RANG!” a male voice called from below, and the VIP room collectively
winced as the shout doubled into two and then was drowned in a concussive
crash of breaking glass, falling wall sconces, and, to the trained ear, a
man of at least Maxie Zeus’s size being hurled into a jukebox.

“I fear someone got up on the wrong side of the cave,” Scarecrow observed
with the bored drawl of a seasoned rogue surprised by nothing.

“Well this should be interesting,” Riddler said with a satisfied smirk.
“‘Lina, my pet, I don’t think you’ve ever been here before when ol’ Batsy
showed up and trashed the place.”

“Lucky me,” she said flatly, looking daggers at him.

Another loud crash erupted below, followed by a roar from Croc and a loud
cry in Russian merging into a different crash. To the trained ear:
KGBeast hurled into a table where Croc was sitting, and Croc retaliating
with a barstool.

“Want me to handle it?” Clayface asked, morphing his hand into a bat
trapped in a birdcage.

“No,” Catwoman shrugged. “Either he’s just messing with the little
mice down there, or else he’s coming up here when he’s finished. If
it’s the former, it doesn’t concern any of us, and if it’s the latter… well,
why not let him tire himself out first?”

She was pleased with her edict, as everyone else seemed to be… but she
avoided Edward Nigma’s eyes all the same. It was only after two more
crashes that she dared look his way. She saw his arms crossed and an
expression both judgmental and peevish.

Downstairs, it became quiet… then absolutely silent… the kind of silence
that meant the Bat was leaving. After a minute, the baseline chatter
resumed, and a minute after that, Peahen came up the stairs from the main
level. She handed Raven a folded note, which Raven then brought to
Catwoman.

It was all very discreet, but veterans from the Iceberg knew the routine:
Batman comes in, busts up the place, and leaves a snarling, threatening but
cryptic message with Sly for his boss. It starts with a patently
unapologetic apology for the mess, then gets to the ominous “... and give
your boss a message for me: Tell him that if that cache of diamonds ends up
anywhere outside US territory, I’ll be back to have a little chat
with him.” Sly never knew what the messages meant, but Ozzy (and
anyone else involved in that particular operation) knew it was days or even
hours away from a Bat shutdown.

Catwoman read the note impassively, aware that all eyes were on her.

Bat said “Tell your mistress that I’m oh-so-sorry for the disruption
and that for a woman of her obvious taste and style, I’d have expected a Van
Gogh or two instead of all the high tech vid screens.”

“Typical,” Catwoman sniffed. Then she stood, telling Clayface and
Riddler to enjoy the snack plate she’d ordered. Everyone understood
that she had some loot to secure before Batman could find it, and they
congratulated themselves on hanging out in a club with such a brazen
criminal queen pin running the show.

On her way out, she stopped at the bar—just to tell Sly that she was
picking up Riddler and Clayface’s tab for the night—and while she was there,
she overheard the specifics of what the Bat bust-up was about.

He was looking for a Red Coat operative out of Star City. The man’s
name was Leonard Berlander.

“Stay away from that Van Gogh.”

That echo from the past repeated and reverberated in Selina’s brain as
she traversed the rooftops towards the MoMA.

“Stay away from that Van Gogh.” It was virtually the last
thing he’d said to her as Batman, that last encounter before their
relationship changed forever.

“I’d have expected a Van Gogh” was definitely a summons to meet on
the roof across from the MoMA, and Selina didn’t need that “or two”
to tell her what it was about.

Leonard Berlander was NOT a Red Coat operative out of Star City.
Leonard Berlander was a dead thug. One of Harvey’s first convictions,
one he later found out was innocent. But he couldn’t be bothered
making it right when he found out. He was busy by then, making war on
crime. He was forming alliances with police and vigilantes on
rooftops, and burning up warehouses full of Falcone cash with Batman.
He was building a case against Salvatore Vincent Maroni, the capo dei capi
of the biggest crime family in the state. He was on his way to
becoming the most successful district attorney in Gotham history, and then
the youngest Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, or who knows… He
certainly didn’t have time to worry about little Leonard Berlander.

It was only years later, years after the acid, that Two-Face found out
Berlander committed suicide. The reminder that Harvey Dent was not the
pinnacle of virtue he liked to remember unleashed an identity crisis of epic
and violent proportions. For how could Two-Face be Harvey’s opposite
if they weren’t black-and-white but a mottled and subjective gray?

Catwoman thought over the nightmare encounter that followed, until she
neared the MoMA. Batman was waiting on the roof across from their
loading dock, right where she expected… even from a distance, he radiated
that dark intensity. Everything about his stance said that a light
opening about the Van Gogh would be horribly inappropriate.

“That’s not a good news face,” she observed as she landed.

“No. It’s not,” he said. It was the severest
bat-gravel, the most foreboding how-dare-you-pull-a-gun-in-my-city delivery
that could make hardened wiseguys run for cover. Then the bat
intensity seemed to blink away. His jaw softened, his whole body
seemed less dense.

Selina’s heart stopped. Bruce just sent Psychobat out of the room.
This was going to be very bad news.

“I have a number of automated routines on the Batcomputer,” he began
quietly. “Routines specially designed to identify and track potential
targets of interest to specific criminals who are active at a given moment.
Those having to do with Two-Face obviously track all manner of twos,
doubles, Gemini and Janus imagery, twins, binary—”

“I get the idea,” Selina interrupted.

“Of course.”

He was hedging, delaying the inevitable. He knew it and he hated
himself for his weakness, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. There
was no way to just blurt it out.

“In addition, the program tracks anyone connected with the acid incident.
Everyone connected with the Boss Maroni prosecution, the defense attorneys,
jurors, bailiffs, clerks, everyone who was in the courtroom that day, as
well as the personnel at the hospital where Harvey was taken…”

“What’s happened, Bruce? What did you find?”

Another time, he might have reacted to the name. Tonight, he just
looked north towards the river, towards Gotham General Hospital.

“There was a John Doe, a car accident hit and run, in the ICU at Gotham
General. The man was apparently on foot, between 97th and
Loeb, struck by a stolen mini van.”

“You said there was a John Doe, past tense?” Selina asked, with a
sick apprehension creeping up her throat.

“He’s still alive,” Batman said swiftly. “He was, past tense, a
John Doe in that he was unidentified. When it goes to 24 hours and
they can’t match to a missing persons report, they take finger prints.
In addition to convicts and military personnel, there are all kinds of
prints in the system, including city employees, including current and former
workers in the distric—”

“Spit it out, Bruce. Who’s lying in that ICU in Gotham General?”

“Vernon Fields, the assistant district attorney sitting second chair the
day Sal Maroni scarred Harvey with that acid.”